Statsguru: Violence mars the path to women's empowerment in India

Even as India’s top jobs have improved on gender representation, violence against women remains a major impediment to female empowerment, according to the latest Women and Men in India 2023 report published by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. Crimes against women have risen from 359,849 cases in 2017 to over 445,000 cases in 2022— an average of 1,220 cases per day or 51 cases every hour. Incidents of cruelty by husbands and relatives account for a third of all cases of violence followed by kidnapping and sexual assault (chart 1).

The report mentions that violence often “goes largely unreported due to factors such as impunity, societal silence, stigma, and the shame associated with such incidents.”
 

Moreover, significant disparities in wages paid, overall employment and education continue for women, data from the report shows.
 

Across companies, women make almost 28 per cent of the board of directors. All listed companies and certain public companies are legally mandated to appoint at least one woman director. In senior management positions, where there is no such mandate, women account for 16 per cent of all positions and 28 per cent in other managerial positions (chart 2).

 

More startups are appointing women as directors. There are about 145,000 registered startups in India. Around 17,000 of them had at least one woman director in 2023, a 34 per cent increase from 2022 (chart 3). 

 

Women might be gradually moving up the ladder in top positions but wage differences remain. The pay gap is wider in rural areas for the job of a legislator, manager, technician, service and sales worker among others. The only exceptions to this trend are women legislators and managers in urban areas (chart 4).

 

Since the pandemic, more women have opted for self-employment instead of regular salaried jobs. A larger share of women compared to men tend to work in agricultural and services sectors. While 64 per cent of women were engaged in agricultural jobs in 2022-23 (FY23), most of them in rural areas, only 37 per cent of men did so. The services sector employed about 13 per cent of women compared to 11 per cent of men (chart 5).

 

Literacy among women still lags behind the rates seen among men but female enrolment in some disciplines of higher education (like arts, medical science, social science and education, among others) outpaces men. However, the share of women who clear advanced degree courses dropped from 52.6 per cent in FY19 to 50.8 per cent in FY22 (chart 6).